| Submit your comments on this article |
| Africa Horn |
| In Somalia, an Exodus of the Educated |
| 2009-03-18 |
| Last month, Omar Hassan said goodbye to Somalia, a country so violently polarized that his job in the capital of Mogadishu finally became too controversial. He is a veterinarian. Over the past two years, Hassan stopped making vaccination rounds at the animal market, for fear of being associated with the warlords who had taken it over. He stopped working with the government, for fear of being targeted by Islamist insurgents. He had confined himself to inspecting meat at places within two blocks of his home when a group of young Islamist assassins spotted him chatting with a Western aid worker -- a taboo activity. "They decided to kill me," he said, sitting in the lobby of a Nairobi hotel recently. "To be famous, they have to kill someone with status -- especially professionals. I left that night." In the past year, more than 100,000 Somalis have fled the conflict in the Horn of Africa nation, a figure that includes a crucial subset of people who have been deliberately chased away -- the professional class. During the past several years, professors, lawyers, doctors, engineers, journalists, businessmen, and human rights and peace advocates have joined an exodus that began when Somalia's last central government fell in 1991 and has continued unabated. Even the newly elected president of Somalia's fragile interim government, Sharif Ahmed, has spent more time outside the country than inside, mainly because of security concerns. Members of the educated elite have been hounded by all sides in the conflict. The government of former president Abdullahi Yusuf, backed by the military of neighboring Ethiopia, frequently accused them of supporting the insurgency. Young Islamist insurgents have accused them of backing the government or of being pawns for the United States and other foreign powers whose policies the insurgents often blame for wrecking the country. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #3 A census of "educated elite" in southern Somalia had to be called-off after no one could be found. Sarc. |
| Posted by: balthazar 2009-03-18 12:56 |
| #2 No, the Jihadis are a hybrid of our wonderful inner city public schools and the "moderate mosques" the media tell us so much about. How could the media be wrong? they got their sources straight from Al Jazera! |
| Posted by: Frozen Al 2009-03-18 11:39 |
| #1 And now they'll come to the West and become Jihadis. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2009-03-18 04:40 |